Around two weeks ago, we released two new web-based harm reduction tools, aimed particularly around helping users make better dosage choices in unclear situations. The first is a benzodiazepine dosage convertor, and the second a DXM dosage calculator. The tools have already proven popular on Facebook and Reddit, being shared relatively widely.

We’ve also been very pleased with the overwhelmingly positive response to these tools online, particularly the constructive feedback that has allowed us to quickly improve upon the quality of our released tools.

One of the major issues arising from formulaic benzodiazepine conversion is that while these drugs share a class, their effect profiles differ quite a bit. They can range between being consciously almost imperceptible at higher doses (sometimes reported with diclazepam), or intensely hypnotic at lower doses (e.g. flunitrazepam).

While benzodiazepines have different effect profiles, most strike some balance between being anxiolytic, hypnotic, and muscle relaxant. Frequently, people will be quick to measure a benzo’s ‘effectiveness’ by its psychoactive or ‘noticeable’ effects, which are most likely to be its hypnotic effects. This will, however, vary depending on your reason for taking it: a highly anxiolytic benzo is likely to feel most ‘effective’ to a person wishing to abort a panic attack, the muscle relaxant for the user experiencing muscle discomfort, etc.

This, and that drug effects of themselves are highly subjective, means there are some immanent limitations on how accurate a benzo dosage conversion can be. However, they remain useful in the case of benzos with similar effect profiles (or at least a similarity where it concerns a sought-after quality), and for tapering use – since we have used standard base equivalencies to diazepam provided by medical texts to derive comparisons.

After discussing these limitations with users, we have revamped the benzo conversion tool to maximise usability and minimise the possibility for misunderstandings.

We’ve added a big red notice pointing out that equivalent doses may be inaccurate for larger doses of benzos with different effect profiles.

Inclusion of cards to compare information about the drugs subject to conversion side-by-side, including base dosage, duration, and effect profile information from our API. Using this comparison, you can evaluate differences in the drug’s effect profile, and see its dose ranges when considered as an individual.

Meanwhile, we’ve also added some clarification text to our DXM tool, and some extra information on potential adulterants that certain formulations may contain. We hope that these changes address the primary concerns with our new tools, and allow for maximum usefulness by prospective users with a minimal risk for misleading results.

We’re also working on additional features for this and other tools, which we look forward to telling you about soon!

Update: Just a reminder that we’re still trying to make contact with HR orgs that use our resources! You can do that here.

While it has been some time since we’ve written an update on our blog, TripSit itself has by no means been dormant! In this post, I hope to give an overview of a few major updates we’ve been working on, and an idea of what you can expect from us as 2018 continues. We also post more frequent updates on Twitter and Facebook.

Towards the end of the last year, we were invited to present at several harm reduction conferences in Europe, through which we were excited to find that many harm reduction organisations are actively using our resources. We had many productive discussions with these organisations, and hope to work with them more closely in future. To build on this network, we’re currently trying to compile a list of harm reduction organisations using our resources, or who are interested in working with us. In doing this, we can more easily gain feedback and maintain closer relationships with those relying on our services. For this purpose, we’ve placed several adverts around our websites, but if you work for such an organisation, you can let us know about you here.

We have also put a lot of work into improving our online services, publishing two new harm reduction tools and making a major update to our factsheets service.

We’ve created a DXM calculator, inspired by the now defunct tool that used to be available on DarkRidge. This page allows users to easily calculate their DXM doses based on various preparations of DXM-containing medicines, and their weight. Over the coming weeks, we will be expanding this service to include a greater variety of products, and then add harm reduction information concerning dangerous and undesirable additives.

Our other new tool provides a calculator for dosage equivalencies between benzodiazepine drugs. This is possible because the strength of most benzos are measured in terms of their potency in relation to the ‘gold-standard’ of 10mg diazepam. While the base calculator is now finished, work will continue to provide coverage for a greater number of benzodiazepine drugs, and to provide additional advice based on the differing properties of the various drugs in the class: their tendency towards hypnosis, analgesia, anxiolysis, etc.

We’ve also recently rolled out changes to our online chat system, making it easier for people to get help and to improve the general user experience. Most obviously, our web client received a major update, primarily visible through its entirely redesigned user interface. We’d like to thank prawnsalad and the other developers working on Kiwiirc for their stellar software, which helps support what we do.

After being asked many times by willing potential volunteers how to get involved with tripsitting, we decided to streamline the process. Now, when browsing to our chat page, you can see a ‘Here to Help’ button, which will allow you to drop into the support channels in a supporting role.

We have also made a few load-bearing changes to our assistance infrastructure – provisioning more channels, and balancing users between them. These changes were prompted by a large influx of users following coverage of our network from a popular YouTube personality. While these initially presented a challenge for the community both in dealing with the increased load from legitimate users and trolls, it allowed us to develop a more robust and scalable tripsitting service, able to better serve a larger amount of people concurrently as we grow.

In the coming months, we hope to continue developing our existing resources and finding opportunities for realising new ideas. We’re hoping to place a particular focus, this year, on forging relationships with other harm reduction organisations, and investigating how we can all work together to improve continuity of care, and to provide a more cohesive harm reduction infrastructure worldwide.

After a long period of collaboration between the teams of both PsychonautWiki and TripSit, we are proud to announce that our factsheets database at http://drugs.tripsit.me/ now uses PsychonautWiki’s subjective effects index as its primary source for drug effects.

Using PsychonautWiki’s semantic API we were able to pull the list of subjective effects and link through to their full explanations on their wiki, as you can see on http://drugs.tripsit.me/LSD

I think this is a big move forward for the harm reduction community in general and I’m pleased at the work both teams have put into this.

Since its inception, TripSit has aimed to be an inclusive community for those interested in drugs and beyond. After much discussion, we have decided to change our policy regarding young people using the network, and as suchwe will no longer allow membersunder the age of 18 to socialise on our network.

We believe that anyone should be able to receive support for drug related issues, so we we will keep #tripsit open to anyone requiring assistance, so long as they meet our 13+ rule as required by the COPA act. However, every other channel on the network, including channels not owned by TripSit, will become 18+ only.

Part of the reason for this change is that people under the age of 18 are still very much in development, and we believe that TripSit at large is a place children and young teenagers should not be exposed to directly. However, they will still have access to TripSit’s resources through our #tripsit and #sanctuary channels, as well as our online resources on the Wiki and factsheets.

While we believe that young-adults should be able to directly seek support from TripSit, it is not wise for them to be influenced by the wider drug-related community until a later age. Furthermore, in order to encourage a productive drug-tolerant community, we must allow our members to have the confidence that what they say will not be negatively influencing young people who have not had the same education and experience they do.

Starting today, 2016-04-11, TripSit is entering the announcement period before the new policy takes effect. Exactly one month from now, 2016-05-11, users under 18 will no longer be able to make use of the TripSit channels, with the exception of #tripsit and #sanctuary. Community members under the age will have the chance to say goodbye and get the contact information of anyone they want to keep in touch with, and will be welcome back to the network once we can be assured they are over the age limit.

During the announcement period, we will be making this policy change obvious to the people who use our network. A full list of the changes will be made available onthis wiki document.

After the announcment period, the policy change will start to be enforced, and any user found under the limit going forward will be removed. This rule will not apply retroactively, as in we will not remove users under the age of 18 until there is evidence that they are currently under 18 after 2016-05-11.

Users who are looking to get unbanned can view the unban procedure here. In short, members will need to wait until we can be assured they are over the age limit, or they will need to provide us proof of age as described in the guide.

After many months of work, TripSit is proud to announce a new release of its popular drug combination reference chart. This new version includes many corrections, updates and clarifications. We have also moved towards a simpler visual style, to allow users to more easily identify drug combinations. We hope that this update continues to serve as a useful harm reduction tool for both drug users and for harm reduction organisations.

Less common drugs, such as PCP and now aMT have been removed from the chart, though the combination information for these drugs is still available on their respective factsheet pages.

As always, this chart should only be taken as an ‘at-a-glance’ reference to the safety of drug combinations, and we hope for it to be a jumping off point for the informed drug user to aid in making sensible decisions with drugs. It’s certainly not intended as a sole reference point! With this release, we also have put a lot of work into describing the reasons and particular dangers of certain combinations, which can be found either at the bottom of https://combo.tripsit.me/ or on individual drug pages on http://drugs.tripsit.me/.